Sharing cinematic experiences one movie review at a time…plus, something extra here and there

oshea jackson jr

Welcome to review of the most January movie ever. Yes, I know it’s already February but January is more than just a month, it’s a whole separate genre of movies. This is Den of Thieves.

IMDb summary: A gritty crime saga which follows the lives of an elite unit of the LA County Sheriff’s Dept. and the state’s most successful bank robbery crew as the outlaws plan a seemingly impossible heist on the Federal Reserve Bank.

Den of Thieves was directed by Christian Gudegast from the script by Gudegast himself and Paul Scheuring. The duo has worked on various projects before. Gudegast is probably best known for writing London Has Fallen, while Scheuring is responsible for creating the TV show Prison Break. Their work on this film was a mixed bag. The film was directed competently enough (especially for a first-time feature director) but the writing was just a steaming pile of cliches and recycled ideas.

Let’s start with the characters. Den of Thieves attempted to pin to equally awful sides against one another: the criminals (who first were shown as having some kind of an honor code which didn’t stick for long) and the unlawful police officers (who were literally introduced while eating donuts – such a cliche). For the first act of the picture, the movie decided to have an interview+flahbacks structure that was instantly dropped as soon as the set-up was finished. Then, the movie went into more of a confrontation-type of a plot, rather than an investigation story. This type of direct relationship between the two groups would have made for a great story if it weren’t so convoluted. Den of Thieves really tried going for the elaborate and turned out confused (even the titles appearing on screen were convoluted as both the names of characters, the names of places and the times were all flashed on screen).

In addition, for the movie that picked direct confrontation as its narrative structure, it really lacked actual action scenes. All of the action was crammed into the last 30 minutes of the film and I wish there was more of it in the preceding 1.5h. For an old-school actioner, Den of Thieves was surprisingly action-less. The movie also should have explained more of its twist and turns as to make it more engaging throughout. The final reveal was quite good but it came way too late for me to have carried.

Two ideas in the script that I found quite interesting and worthy of mention were 1)the way to enter a gang and 2)the position of bars as neutral grounds. The fact that sport or the military are the only two points of acceptance on the street was fascinating. It really drew attention to what is valued in terms of male identity in the criminal world. Also, the portrayal of a bar as a cesspool of information was spot-on (this comes from somebody who has worked behind the counter and provided basically free therapy for customers).

The film assembled quite a good cast of B-listers. Gerard Butler (Geostorm) was half of a cartoon, half of the real person as the main ‘bad cop’. Inexplicably, he also had a family on the side (cause even when Butler plays a twat, he has to have a family. He is the Scottish Liam Neeson, basically). American God’sPablo Schreiber played the main villain of the film and was good. It took me forever to recognize the actor without the ginger hair and bear of Mad Sweeney, though. O’Shea Jackson Jr. (Straight Outta Compton) played the mediator between the two groups and was great too. He was also the only one to have some sort of a character arc. A bunch of others actors rounded up the cast but as they had almost nothing to do, I don’t see the point to mention them. Also, as Den of Thieves was mostly just a fest of traditional masculinity, it had a total zero of female characters.

In short, Den of Thieves was an okay action movie that should have had more action and fewer cliches.